


The Middle Ground

by AbelQuartz



Series: Selkie AU [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Anger, Arguing, Broken Bones, Conversations, Difficult Decisions, Family, Gen, Middle School, Parenthood, School, Selkies, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24963622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: It’s been two weeks since Connie’s been to the beach and the hospital. In that time, she can’t help but wonder how Stephen’s been feeling, how he’s been holding up without her. Going through the school day is all well and good, but when a mysterious visitor arrives, Connie might be in for a surprise, and a decision.
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Rose Quartz
Series: Selkie AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556764
Comments: 5
Kudos: 56





	The Middle Ground

When Connie had done her research on selkie mythology, she read about the desire that selkies always had to return to the ocean. Selkie wives who had been captured by human husbands would stand and mourn the loss of their skin, their inability to jump into the sea and return to the elements. Connie was starting to feel that herself.

Two weeks had passed since she had broken her ribs. Recovery was slow and school was slower. Had it always taken this long to get from class to class? Did she really go up and down so many stairs over the course of the day? The injury meant that she was effectively banned from gym class, and to get a passing grade she spent the periods in the library, researching muscle groups and medical processes for an end-of-the-year report. Her teacher had actually been impressed by her suggestion to research her own injury, and the school had decided that it was an acceptable substitute to getting dodgeballs thrown at her for an hour each day.

Carrying a crutch and a rolling backpack at the same time, as it turned out, was practically impossible. As adamant as her mother was that she take it easy, Connie could only do so much on her own. The crutch’s ungainly addition to her usual stride was too cumbersome compared to the backpack, and she towed it along diligently down the hallways.

To the girl’s surprise, more people were curious about her injury and inquired after her than she had expected. Her determination to keep a stiff upper lip impressed the other boys and girls, and when she had shared with her class the edited story of her survival, her bravery was implicitly commended by the shocked gasps and the murmurs of ‘cool’ and ‘wow.’ Connie didn’t like the attention, but she appreciated the pleasantries and sympathy. To her credit, it hurt pretty much constantly in some capacity. And every ache reminded her of Stephen.

In those two weeks she hadn’t seen her friend once. Connie’s mother and father forbade her from taking long walks down to the beach, partially to keep her home and rested and partially, the girl assumed, from misplaced paranoia. The two adults usually kept their emotions distant, and over her recovery Connie had seen more tenderness and discipline from her parents than she had seen in quite some time. Doug Maheswaran was usually soft, but offered Connie more questions, called her by little nicknames, checked on her before they had to go to bed. The difference between her mother’s demeanor was almost night and day. As much as Priyanka Maheswaran was the matriarchal ideal for any household, it was clear that the events of that day had shaken her. Stephen had shaken her. Her brusqueness was more fragile, the words more measured. Her questions about schoolwork and progress had completely lost their edge. The whole household was bathed in an aura like shattered glass. And they didn’t even know the half of it. 

Connie missed Stephen terribly. There was no other way to put it. She missed seeing the rays of the sun as they lit up the ever-shifting silver of his perfect eyes. She missed the words in her books and the meaning they had to him, the story that they left hanging in the middle, made up of symbols Steven could never recognize. She missed the touch, the sense of it all, the way Stephen’s body was always warm even in the coldest ocean, the pressure from their foreheads together, the closeness she couldn’t imagine creating with another human being.

The bell rang and shook Connie out of her reverie. She looked down at her sandwich with a single bite missing, the unblemished apple, the note from her mother with a scrawled heart and an illegible doctor’s love. The girl heaved a deep sigh. Even with the newfound attention, she ate by herself in the cafeteria, and thank goodness, because she had apparently zoned out of existence for the last half-hour thinking about her circumstances.

As she packed up her lunch, she forced herself to finish this day. There was her study period in the library, then homeroom at the last bloc, and then another long bus ride back home. Connie knew she had to eat dinner tonight no matter how she was feeling. Strength was imperative for recovery. The more she took care of herself, the shorter it would be until she was allowed to go out again.

Briefly, Connie considered what Stephen would be like in the school system. She could already hear him ask thousands of questions about how various components worked in the human world, things that she took for granted like electricity, writing utensils, plumbing. It suddenly occurred to Connie that Stephen had never been inside a restroom before. No, she had to push that particular thought out of her mind.

The existence of selkies still baffled Connie. There was an entirely new species living among them, somewhere hidden in the ocean, and they truly were a different breed. Where was the human divergence? Why did they transform like that? What deity or force of nature or magical amplification allowed for such a creature to exist? The more Connie thought about it, the more jarring it was to think that she and Stephen were completely different species. He was simply not human. No matter how he looked, no matter what words came out of his mouth, he was as alien to her as a chimpanzee or a praying mantis. But that wasn’t fair. He was capable of empathy, consciousness, learning, conceptualization. What were the consequences of a world where selkies were real?

But she already knew. Human beings were still dominant. Through the will of the world, humans had hunted selkies and took over all the land and all the water, forcing them into hiding, murdering and denying until the myths overtook reality. There was no selkie society as far as Connie knew. From what she had heard from Stephen, there was a small colony, under the guidance of a few female selkies, keeping Stephen safe from the world. He hadn’t liked to talk about the details.

A few days ago, out of hope and curiosity, Connie had waited until her parents were out doing errands, then she had called Greg Universe down at the car wash to ask if Stephen had shown up since the last time they had all been together. 

“Sorry, kiddo,” the man had said. “We had lunch, then he walked off down the beach and that’s the last I’ve seen of him.”

“Well, could you maybe go down to the beach to check? Just to see if he’s around there, if he’s coming back, you know.”

“I spent the weekend wandering all the way down the beach as far as I could go and back. No sign of him. Wherever he’s staying, well, it’s not near the coast as far as I can tell. Just birds and rotten fish out here.”

On the upside, Stephen was staying safe. Greg and Priyanka probably felt differently. Connie had seen the boy put on his skin and dive fully-formed back into the ocean, but the adults probably thought he had been reclaimed by whatever strange parental figures he claimed to have. Watching her friend break down in her mother’s office was one of the hardest things Connie had ever had to witness. Now, she couldn’t even go down and talk to him about it.

She had to hope that he was getting the help that he needed from the other selkies, and that thought made her feel even more miserable. The chances that the roaring, violent women could actually help him seemed to slim in the girl’s mind. Of course she was biased, and also severely injured, but they just didn’t seem like the comforting types.

What she knew about the living situation was limited. Stephen had been sworn to secrecy, kept apart from humans in an undisclosed location, and had grown up with the expectation that he would never be part of human life. His choosing to come to Connie had shaken things up so much that the girl wasn’t sure where that left him. Going into a hospital and eating pizza with Greg must have been so taboo. Whether or not he would be punished, or whether he had already been punished, was a question Connie couldn’t answer. But it also struck her that they must have known about their other visits, their playdates. Garnet knew where Stephen had been when she confronted the children. 

The only possible answer Connie had was that they saw the transition as inevitable, and it made the girl feel like she had swallowed rocks. The allure of human life wasn’t just about friendship or loneliness. Selkies and humans had been together for generations. The tales from the sea were more often than not about botched romance, kidnapping, unrequited love. Stephen’s parents had died because a human fell in love with his mother. The tumult of love and hate and rising and falling tensions was more than Connie could bear. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for a friend, and yet the only friend she had made belonged to the ocean.

The time she spent by herself was made all the more bearable by the thought of talking to Stephen at the end of the day or week. Without that comfort, Connie dragged herself through the hallways to the library. Nobody cared about where she was right now. The librarians were expecting her, of course, but they hardly looked up with all the work that they had to do. She would check in with her teacher, head to homeroom, and then go home for more recovery.

The babble of students around her was accompanied by the occasional wave or small greeting, a handful of boys and girls who had taken particular interest in her over the last school year. They weren’t friends, far from it, but they were acquaintances, people who she could smile and raise a hand to as she headed to her locker to drop off her uneaten lunch. 

Had she changed since the start of the school year? She hadn’t thought so, but Connie knew she could be mistaken. One major change was the risk-taking that had led to her injury. Smaller parts of herself, once she looked back through the lens of the year, had grown more daring, more energetic as she tackled tasks and issues. She was raising her hand in class more. She could read aloud without feeling everyone’s eyes on her. Reading to Stephen had helped. Everything about that boy had helped her.

The hallway was mostly clear by the time Connie had finished with her belongings. She winced as she slowly organized her books and binders, reordering her backpack and getting things ready for the end of the day. In her organizer, unbeknownst to her parents, she was counting down the days until she could feel safe asking them about going back to the beach. Her research was not just for familiarity’s sake; Connie wanted to know about her body. Getting to know the injury was a step forward for knowing how to treat it. There wasn’t much to be done about a broken rib, but she was doing all she could. 

As she stood up straight again, the last few students had dispersed to their common areas and the locker rooms and wherever they needed to be. Connie began to roll down the hall. Each movement made it really hard not to still hate Pearl. Just because she understood the selkie’s attack didn’t make her ribs hurt any less.

Connie rounded the corner. Down the hall, the main entrance to the library sat with its patient doors closed. Across from the doors, there was a small atrium, one of many entrances to the school, with an office to the side and other doors warmed by the afternoon sun. Standing outside the school doors was a woman.

There weren’t strict measures in place for visitors like there were at other schools in the state. Some of them had metal detectors, security cameras, various hired security that had to walk around making sure disruptive students were readily and disproportionately punished. Connie’s school had none of that yet. Parents had to check in at the main office, but the doors weren’t locked from the outside yet. This was probably the case of a parent who was still somehow lost in the shuffle of middle school arbitration.

It did no harm to be useful. Connie gestured down the hall where the office was, smiling at the adult on the other side. The woman didn’t move. Maybe she wanted more help, but as brave as Connie was, strangers still scared her more than she was willing to admit. The girl merely nodded and rolled on to the front doors of the library.

There was a tapping at the door. Connie turned again, and noticed the woman carrying something under her arm. Through the dirty glass, the girl couldn’t see exactly what it was. It looked like a blanket, or a folded jacket, but it was so hot. Even through the glass it was oddly iridescent, as shiny as —

_ As shiny as Stephen’s skin. _

The woman smiled as dawning horror crossed Connie’s face. She turned away from the girl and started back, across the path to the schoolyard. Connie was frozen in place. The grip on her backpack handle was enough to turn her knuckles to stone. Immediately, the pain in her ribs began to burn again. Silence from the hallway twitched in her head, an invisible and terrible beat.

It couldn’t be Stephen’s skin, it just couldn’t. She couldn’t handle the fact that something had happened while she was away. The possibility left her breathless and stranded. Her friend needed her at a time like this, and she was away, incapacitated, recovering. But who was there to be with Steven as he recovered? If he had been mangled or killed, it meant that all the other selkies had probably been killed fighting for him. Connie forced herself to gulp down air. There was another chance, a chance that the woman was carrying her own skin, and that she was here on Stephen’s behalf. But the boy would have been perfectly capable of coming with a chaperone. Unless there was some other motivation, Connie didn’t know why there would be another selkie showing up at her middle school.

The fact remained that she had a choice to make. The girl looked at the library doors. There was a true chance that if she followed the woman, then she would be drawn into a trap and subsequently killed, or worse. Even if the mysterious figure was friendly, Connie could get caught out of school and face serious punishments from the administration. Otherwise, she could walk into the library and never see the figure again — until the woman showed up on another day, growing bolder, following her home.

No teachers were coming down the hallway, no administrators or errands or wandering classmates. What would Stephen do? Connie gripped her backpack tightly and edged towards the door. The boy would have done anything to see her again. These were desperate times. If anything, Connie imagined that her friend had to be talked down from coming back to the beach and wandering as he pleased, hoping and waiting.

Connie straightened her body as much as she could as she looked at the library doors. She was the only human who knew about the selkies. She was the only one who had befriended them, who had talked to this group in generations. Through death and misery and shared isolation, she had found herself in the arms of a friend who had shown her that magic was real. There was no other choice.

Her footsteps seemed to echo louder than usual as she padded towards the doors. The squeak of the hinges and the rumble of her backpack wheels ground her anxiety into a fine powder that sifted into every crack of her brain. Before she knew it, Connie was out on the pavement, outside school grounds with the door gently clicking behind her.

The woman had walked off down towards the bus stops and the parking lot. Parents’ and teachers’ cars filled the blacktop, and across the way, there was the children’s park. A grandmother and some pre-K children were on the swingsets, but the park was more or less empty for the time being. Connie watched the woman walk towards the grass and woodchips, stroking the bundle in her arms. 

From the back, it was hard to make out her features. Her hair trailed past her shoulderblades in strawberry blonde curls, naturally tangled but not unkempt. It looked like she was wearing a skirt and camisole, respectively brown and wine-red, oddly modern. She didn’t walk fast but Connie knew that it would be hard to keep up regardless. The stress wasn’t good for her body. Still, she had limited time. The girl limped along to the sidewalk as fast as she was able.

There were windows on the side of the school that she had to watch out for. Teachers were too busy with their classes to notice her, and none of the students would be asking her if she was running away. The anxiety still spiked in Connie’s body, more than it ever had since she had been at school. Running off school grounds was such an improper breaking of school rules that Connie had never even considered what it would be like. Rebellious boys and girls with offroad bikes would occasionally split early and go about whatever delinquency they partook in, at the muttering disapproval of her parents and academic equals. Here Connie was, following a stranger down the pavement, holding onto her aching body, just as bad as them. 

At least she had a mission. She forced herself to slow down a little, panting as she looked up. The woman was sitting on the bench at the end of the park, and the grandmother was leading her gaggle of grandchildren down to the street parking. It was isolated for the time being. Connie couldn’t stop her neck from turning around, just in case some administrative assistant or hall monitor was following her. Nobody was around. The coast was clear.

The walk up the minute knoll was a struggle even with determination in her bones. Connie dragged her backpack up the grass as gently as she could. It still felt like shards of glass were being minced against her spleen whenever she exerted herself too much. Maybe, she thought, she could put a review of her own injury in the essay as a primary source. She wasn’t about to work on that today, though. The girl had the feeling that this was going to take the whole period.

When Connie stepped into the woman’s line of sight, the stranger’s lips curled up expectantly. Connie stood to the side, away from the bench where the woman was seated. In her lap, she could see that the skin was blacker than Stephen’s, with whitish markings, and was definitely not his. The woman was stroking it like a cat, running her fingers along the silky fur. Connie wished she could tell for certain whether or not she was a friend or a foe. Then, the woman spoke.

“Stephen was right,” she said. “You  _ are _ brave.”

“Who are you?” Connie demanded. “How did you know where I’d be?”

“And smart, too.”

The woman looked up and let out a little laugh, just under her breath, as Connie stood in mildly embarrassed silence. So, she knew the boy, and that was a start, and he had told this person about Connie, so was this Amelia? Connie remembered the name from back when Garnet had confronted them on the beach, but she couldn’t remember if Stephen had talked about what his guardians looked like. This stranger had a kind face despite Connie’s perceptions. Her lips were full and smiling, her eyes as dark as the sea. When the sun hit them, Connie could see streaks of hot pink etched like ravines into the deep brown. She was a bigger person, curved and lax, sitting like she owned the bench, the skin on her arms and chest as warm and delicate as a pale peony.

Her smile faded the more she watched Connie, and she sighed, patting the seat on the bench next to her. 

“I understand that you’re cautious, and I am, too,” the woman said. “But you and Stephen are teaching me that I can’t rely on that any more. And besides, I know you’re no threat right now. Pearl told me all about that.”

The tone of her voice was far from apologetic, but there was an edge of concern that Connie thought she picked up on. Connie let her backpack roll to a stop next to the bench as she lowered herself to the plastic-coated metal, just slow enough to keep her from gasping in pain.

“There are only so many schools in the area. Stephen mentioned your grade, so it didn’t take long to find out where you were. Amelia’s been watching you, scouting out your paths.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are.”

The woman’s hands rested on top of her skin. She looked out at the park and sighed gently, her chest rising and falling with patience.

“You may call me Rosa,” she said, “and I look after all our kind. Stephen, his denmates, his guardians — my warriors — and every other selkie abandoned by the storm.”

That was a new name. Stephen never mentioned any other selkie in his tribe or group or whatever the name was. It bothered Connie that the boy hadn’t talked to her about this part of his life, but it unfortunately made sense. He mentioned his guardians only in passing, and Connie hadn’t asked. So much of his life felt private, like she was already trespassing on something sacred. To inquire meant to break an unspoken law.

Answers, it seemed, had come to her. Rosa knew about human life enough to know what a school was. The disconnect between the ocean and the land was an unknown berth. Stephen knew enough about vacationers, but didn’t know how to read. What did Rosa know? What did Amelia and Garnet and Pearl know? How many other selkies were there? Connie had so many questions and she knew that this was her only moment to ask about them. Even then, it wasn’t her place, and she felt frustrated just looking at this woman. Just as Stephen had come to her, Rosa had approached, and there was always a purpose with grown-up, always something they wanted out of the deal.

“He doesn’t talk about you with his guardians,” Rosa mentioned with a smile. “But he speaks very highly of you to me.”

“I-I, um…”

“I suppose I’m to blame for his human fascination. I used to want to go there. I wanted what all our kind want, to walk among them, to have a true life in and out of the water. Amelia wanted that. Stephen wants that with you. But he knows now what the consequences are.”

“With what Pearl saw. With his mom and dad.”

Rosa nodded solemnly. 

“Pearl brought him to me as a pup shortly after,” she said. “She traveled so long. She was uncertain of my vision. Selkies are solitary folk, Connie. We break off and sing loneliness to the sea. I wanted to bring us together in strength. Once Pearl saw what happened to Stephen, she wanted to keep him safe.”

“So are you like his mom, kind of?”

“We raised him. Suckled him, weaned him, taught him to hunt, to sing.”

Immediately, Connie wanted to know what other magic selkies could do. The passage of image and song, the psychic delivery, was almost as fascinating to her as the transformation between seal and human. It made her wonder just what magic was. But it would always be off-limits to humans, not because of inherent unfairness or selkie selfishness, but because humans simply didn’t have it. Stephen’s song had been the closest she could come, and at least her ears could hear it. She hated to think what would have happened if she simply couldn’t have understood him.

“How could I ever have taken her place, though?” Rosa said. “We never told him until he started asking questions, and he never asked questions until he saw other parents, other pups. The story was all we had. Pearl kept the song secret.”

“Yeah, I can see why,” Connie murmured.

What did Rosa want? As they sat together, Connie had to hide her concern. She had been sought out for a reason, but she didn’t want to ask outright. She had learned from Garnet and Pearl that the selkie seemed to be suspicious folk. Maybe demanding to know who Rosa was and all that from the beginning had been a mistake. Then again, the woman could have easily hurt her if she wanted to. And she could have vanished afterwards without a trace; what were the police going to do, arrest a seal?

“But you know much about secrets as well, young one.”

“And I haven’t told anyone. Not my mom, not Greg, nobody. Stephen’s been safe, right?”

“As safe as he can be. But now he suffers from loneliness even more so. He wanders on his hunts by the beach, watching the boats, wishing to see you.”

“I can’t come until my parents say so. It sucks. Rosa, did Pearl really have to try and hurt me like that? It’s because of her that I can’t see Stephen, and I’ll be honest, I was probably too nice to her when we left the beach. I’m still a little mad.”

Rosa pursed her lips for a moment. One the one hand, Connie knew, she had to defend the colony’s actions as they pertained to keeping Stephen and their lifestyle safe. And yet there was an air of apology and discomfort in the way she curled her fingers against the skin in her lap.

“She acted with prejudice,” Rosa said slowly, “for she was the only one who witnessed the slaughter. We’ve all seen human cruelty, but for her…”

“What did she think was going to happen?” Connie snapped. “She could hear Stephen just like I could, she knew what was going on!” 

“But what were your motivations? What was the purpose of your presence? Did you coerce our boy into singing for you? Were you plotting to bring him onto land? How could she know your intentions are pure? For that matter, how do I know?”

Rosa turned her head to stare at Connie with her mouth shut tight. Connie started to reply, but she couldn’t deny the truth of the matter. Rosa couldn’t know except through trust. Stephen trusted her, but to what end she had no idea. It didn’t seem fair. The girl turned her head down in frustration. There would never be enough she could do to prove herself to the selkies. Stephen’s trust was as far as she could go. Garnet had trusted her with a vow of silence. She had almost forgotten about that. Connie raised her head.

“What about Garnet then? She trusted me to be Stephen’s friend. Do you think that she made a mistake or something? What did you say to her?”

“Garnet is no stranger to enforcing her promises. She told me she would keep an eye on you for as long as you and Stephen were together. And she promised that if anything happened, she would bring me your body.”

Well, that was chilling. Connie didn’t need much help imagining the woman coming up and dragging her into the ocean on a whim. There was an animal disconnect between Connie and the selkies that she didn’t want to reduce to feral nature, but the species’ divide was a violent one. Selkies were hunted, and they had to be hunters in return. The aggression and threats of death still made Connie shudder, but it was a life-or-death situation for these creatures. Any discovery could lead to extinction.

It made the hospital excursion even more chilling to think about. Stephen had been terrified, and the ramifications were fresh in his mind. Experiencing grief in an alien world must have been the worst sensation imaginable. Greg’s presence had been a godsend, but the man still had no idea what he was dealing with. Connie was in no hurry to tell him. If anything had gotten out, one way or another she would never have seen Stephen again.

“Why did you come to my school?” Connie asked. “Isn’t that risky, too? What if someone stopped you?”

“I had an alibi. If they called me in, I would say that I was your aunt. And you would come down and verify it. I trusted your ingenuity and recognition. It’s why you’re here now. You saw the skin.”

Connie glanced at the relative paleness of the selkie woman, then down at her own arms for a moment. The administration wouldn’t have questioned it for fear of insensitivity, but it was a bit of a stretch. But Rosa was right. Connie could have swung it easily to get herself out and talking. Months ago she wouldn’t have even dreamed it, but months ago she wouldn’t have imagined that magic was real either.

“Okay, fine. But why do you want me now?”

Rosa shrugged and looked out at the park with a sigh. 

“Simply to talk to you for myself. I wanted to tell you that Stephen was safe, that he misses you, that we’re all thinking about the human girl on the beach. It’s been years since any of us have talked to a human. Besides Amelia, but we’re trying to rein her in. So headstrong.”

“I haven’t met Amelia,” Connie said. “Does she go on land? Does… Is she married?”

Even though most of the movies and books Connie read had had minimal information on the creatures compared to pop culture icons, she remembered the marriage. The mythos of sirens combined with the image of Stephen’s parents made Connie worried. The few times that humans and selkies came together never ended up well. The loving marriages ended in heartbreak and the worst ones started with kidnapping. Rosa lowered her head grimly.

“She was. When she was young. And she learned the cruelty of humans then.”

A bad ending, then. Connie didn’t want to press further. When she spoke to Amelia in the future, then she would ask, if the time was right. Burning curiosity filled the girl’s stomach, but there was an uncomfortable uncertainty. 

The more she seemed to press on, the more she felt that there was a gulf between them. Every similarity she had with Stephen was internal, emotional, familial. The differences in culture and species were starting to make the girl feel as though there was a permanent crack. It was the same crack that drove her apart from the human beings in her life. It didn’t seem right, or even possible. Having been driven away from normalcy and friendship, Connie only wanted someone to confide in.

But she hadn’t met with Stephen that much. She had seen her classmates every day for more than half a year, some of them longer than that, and she had seen Stephen, she realized, less than twenty times total. Each day had been short, and secretive, and cautious, and they had all been so wonderful. The world was driving them apart.

“Can I see Stephen?” Connie blurted out. 

“When you’ve recovered, you’re welcome to come to the ocean as much as you please, yes?”

“No, that’s not what I mean, I—”

Connie turned her legs with some difficulty. Rosa did likewise, folding her hands together intently and raising her eyebrows at the girl. Connie looked at the park, then back at her school, then back to the selkie.

“Can you bring him here to meet up with us?” Connie said. “You came, right? And you guys can go on land, and you can protect him, and since I can’t go anywhere, well, you can bring him up to see me, right? Does he still have the clothes he had last time? If not, I can bring more!”

Rosa’s silence made Connie’s pleas wilt. The woman shook her head with a grimace, like she wanted to smile but couldn’t force an untruth.

“Connie. I’m still teaching him. Stephen has so much to learn about your world, and it’s not time. He wants to come up on land, too, but we had to teach him about humans, and teach him to stay away.”

“Well, I can help teach him, right? I’ve been teaching him how to read, kind of.”

“And I’ve been teaching him how many human beings there are in the world,” Rosa said. “He’s learned about the destruction of habitats. He’s learned about extinction. He’s learned about fear and magic. I could take him around the world and teach him about where the waterways are clogged with garbage.”

Connie wanted to open her mouth and tell Rosa that she was just fearmongering, keeping Stephen in the dark, but the woman’s face darkened as she spoke. The girl felt a familiar grip in her stomach.

“I’ve had to teach Stephen about the human things you could never do. I took him on land and explained what a toilet was. I taught him about ancestry. Race. Reproduction. Modesty. I taught him about history.”

“I-I…”

She couldn’t have taught him about that. Thinking about Stephen changing out of his skin and into shorts still made Connie redden even now. The body shouldn’t have been a point of contention, and yet it was. What was the role of a friend? Connie wanted to talk about the selkie and human perspective, but she couldn’t get a word in. She didn’t know what to say.

“There are no selkie historians,” Rosa said. “Our flesh is like yours, from all around the world, but we are all selkie. There is no difference. Where we come from has no bearing on our blood. How could it? We leave our families. We leave the past behind. We live in fear, fear of humans. How many selkies are there left on this planet?”

“I — I don’t know.”

“No one ever will.”

The only way that selkies had lasted this long was secrecy. However long they had been around earth and humans, they had evaded history, floating by undetected. Connie gripped her knees. The only reason she could think of was that they had known humans before recorded history, and as such, they had known of human cruelty before writing; only the legends remained.

But they were a sentient species. They were more than animals. The girl looked at Rosa, and she had to wonder how they had survived for so long on fear alone. They probably weren’t immortal, as Stephen seemed to be aging at the same rate as she was. How did their brains work? How did their souls thrive? Connie couldn’t imagine an existence at sea. Her stomach turned as she realized what it meant to have no history. It meant no progress. It meant no fulfillment, no technology, nothing to look forward to. The present was permanent and immutable. Survival was the only goal. Generations of selkies had to sate their curiosity with fear. Stephen had risked so much.

She didn’t want to cry. Through stubbornness or confidence or whatever was welling up inside of her, Connie didn’t want to cry in front of Rosa. This wasn’t sadness, after all. It was frustration, anger at the world, at her own species. Her friend shouldn’t have had to face risk just to talk to her. The gambit shouldn’t have threatened his life.

“I’m...sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, child.”

“No, I mean, I… I feel bad, for you. It’s not fair that you need to be afraid all the time. I know that I hate feeling afraid, and you shouldn’t have to feel that.”

Rosa paused, chuffing in humorless laughter. She was silent, and Connie let the silence soak in. There were silences that felt comfortable, like when Stephen and Connie stared out at the passing clouds. There were the silences of being alone, the kind of silence that she would have been feeling had she stayed in the library. This was an uncertain silence.

“I no longer fear for myself,” the woman said. “I fear for the future. I fear for Stephen. We’re all watching you two closely. Things have changed, Connie. There is...one piece of history. But it’s a tall tale. A story, passed down from parent to child. All creatures know of it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the story of a world before. A clean world, a bright world, where the humans were isolated, and told stories, and passed on myths, and created gods. Humans respected nature. In a world of no humans, the selkie could walk free. But in a world where humans knew their place apart from nature, where they feared the elements… Equal fear in equal measure.”

It could never be like that again; Connie didn’t even have to ask. No amount of optimism would roll back human development. Boats, yachts, fishing, lobster traps, oil rigs — there was so much in the ocean that could never be removed. Beach City was a quiet town, and there weren’t the giants of the fishing industry around to drown out the natural noise. It didn’t change the fact that humans did indeed rule so much of the planet. With the dawn of the internet and global communication, selkies could be in more danger than ever.

Connie wondered how much Rosa knew, and how much she had had to learn on her own, how much she had been hurt. Someone had taught her about humans, but the world had changed so rapidly during those times. It was impossible to tell how old the selkie was. She looked anywhere between mid-twenties and respectable middle age. She was certainly old enough to know better and to brave the world in order to see Connie. Gauging what that meant was difficult for the girl.

All she knew for certain was that she hated this. Connie hated being drawn into a web of danger and discovery. The more she knew about Stephen and selkies, the more she felt that she didn’t belong. It had been so simple before. Their conversations by the beach and their playdates had been the best part of her life. What did Stephen feel about them? Then, Connie had a thought.

“Did Stephen talk to you about Mr. Universe?” she said.

“He was hesitant,” Rosa said. “After he returned, the three chastised him for riding with a strange man. But he was stubborn in his trust for this friend of yours. What of it? Is Stephen keeping secrets from us?”

“Why wouldn’t he? If all you’re going to do is make him feel afraid, he’s going to feel afraid of you too!” Connie snapped. “And when he was feeling afraid and alone in the hospital, Mr. Universe was there to make him feel safe. He treated Stephen like he wanted to help, because he did, and you couldn’t imagine how...how genuine he was.”

“And again, girl, what of it?”

If she wasn’t recovering, Connie would have stood in defiance. She could hear the edge of caution in Rosa’s voice, the same irritation that adults had when they were afraid a child was about to make a valid point. But she had to breathe. Her mind was scattered but her heart was present.

“Mr. Universe owns a car wash, and it’s close to the beach. You can take Stephen to him, and see what happens.”

“Do you have any idea how much that sounds like a trap?” Rosa said. “Do you intend to draw Stephen in like a fish on a hook? I won’t allow it.”

“Rosa, I know it sounds bad, but Stephen trusts me, and I trust Mr. Universe, and if you didn’t trust me then you wouldn’t be listening to me at all. Garnet and Pearl saw that I was harmless. I just want to be a good friend to Stephen, as best I can. Don’t you want to give him the best, too?”

“The best thing to do is to keep him safe, so that he won’t run off and get hurt like Amelia, or worse, like his parents. There is no such thing as a harmless human. Your Universe friend is no exception. Stephen needs —”

“Stephen needs people who care about him!”

“We care about him more than you ever could.”

“If you cared about him, then he wouldn’t be afraid of you!”

The silence was full of fury. It was easy for Connie to tell that Rosa wasn’t used to this kind of backtalk. Inside her eyes, the pink ribbons seemed to flare up in frustration. As stony calm as she was, as even as her breathing appeared, Rosa was seething. Connie felt a strange sense of satisfaction ripple through her. She had never spoken to any adult like that, not even when she was arguing with Garnet and Pearl.

Most of all, Connie knew she was right. She could still see Stephen’s body relax and melt into Greg’s hands, the way his tears had rolled down his cheeks and how his eyes had widened and looked straight into the man’s soul. In Connie’s mind, as much as it hurt to think, she imagined Stephen seeing Greg Universe as a father figure, or at least a caring man, someone Stephen had needed in his life. Knowing that they could never have a genuine relationship pained the girl. All she could do was beg and coerce the selkies to let the orphan go.

“I wanted to trust you,” Rosa murmured. “But it seems that you are as distrustful of us as we are rightfully distrustful of you. Your brazen attitude is almost admirable.”

“It’s not —” Connie sighed with frustration. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just want Stephen to be who he wants to be, and feel what he wants to feel without having to be scared.”

“It is a privilege to not choose fear. Stephen’s bravery on the day he met you was so reckless. He could have been seen or killed. Humans rule the world. We have no choice but to be scared. That’s simple how we must be.”

“Well, I still want to make it better. And… I think Mr. Universe does, too, in his own way. He cares about Stephen. We all care about Stephen. He needs our help.”

Rosa was quiet for a moment. Their shared outburst had fermented the air into a potent and uncomfortable fog, dispelled with a sigh. The woman softened her gaze as she looked Connie over. The girl shifted on the bench, but she wasn’t going to leave this place until she got what she wanted. She needed to be stubborn, for herself and for her friend.

“And what do you need?” Rosa asked.

“Oh, I…”

Connie pressed her hands together, squeezing the palms until the curves of muscle locked. Had she been so pressed to think about Stephen that she had missed her own mark? No, that kind of behavior wasn’t in her, not yet. The fog of her friend had cast a shadow over her life, but school hadn’t gone away. Her parents remained right where they were, driving her around and cooking her meals and caring about her. She knew she had to eat and sleep and keep herself healthy. In the middle of it all, she knew exactly what was missing.

“I need a friend,” she said.

“What’s stopping you? There are hundreds of other children your age in that school. Surely one of them would want to be your friend.”

“Yeah, well, you’d think that.”

Even though she tried, Connie couldn’t even fake a laugh. The reality of the situation was that there were probably several students who shared her interests and her hobbies, who cared about school and studying as much as she did, who liked sports and language and fantasy. Every single one of them was human, and Stephen was something special. The more she thought about it, the more Connie realized that that was part of what was so upsetting. Discovering Stephen had been the most important moment of her life, the moment when she realized that magic was real, and she existed in a world of folklore and possibility. She could never tell her family, and she could never tell any friend. Being Stephen’s friend meant being sworn into a world of secrets, and spilling those secrets could result in genocide. The weight of it all was settling on her shoulders. Connie wished she could go back to a time where he was just a magical friend, where they could exist without expectation. Now, she knew that that time had never really existed.

“But none of them are like him,” Connie said, “and none of them can ever be him. I’m part of Stephen’s world now, and nothing’s going to change that. You know he’ll come find me.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Stephen, coming up here, knocking on your door, having to talk with humans. I can’t imagine how he was in the hospital, with so many new faces,” Rosa said.

“But isn’t that all the more reason to help bring us together safely? If he gets so fed up or lonely that he comes and looks for me, then wouldn’t it be better for you to help us? I don’t want him to get hurt either. There...are a lot of ways to get hurt.”

Thinking about the pain wasn’t what this was about, though. Connie remembered Stephen’s face when she brought him pizza, the questions he had when she read to him from her books, the light in his eyes when the lollipop had touched his tongue. There were so many good things in the world to experience. If he stuck with her, if they let people like Greg Universe help them, then they could always be safe. But it wasn’t a guarantee. After all, Greg had had to save her when she was young. Even for his age, it was possible Stephen would be at more risk.

“I’ve started with the local shores and settlements,” Rosa said, “though they are still foreign to me. Amelia knows the most. She could be a chaperone. I could help if need be. Stephen can find his way onto solid ground.”

“Well, even though I can’t make it, you can still take him to see Mr. Universe. And you can have him call me, and we can talk on the phone?”

“Another new concept for him. But I’m sure he would love to hear your voice.”

“Do you think that he could eventually learn how to live like Amelia did? Not forever, but… You all seem to know what you’re doing, and Stephen seems so lost sometimes. I’m worried that new tech stuff is just too much for him. Heh, or even something like a Ferris wheel.”

Rosa smiled softly. She was good enough at hiding herself that Connie couldn’t tell if the woman was lying about her own ability to blend in. Selkies, from what the girl could tell, had been living separately from humans for more than a few generations. But they were all over the world, imbued with magic and secrecy, and some of them probably lived human lives. Rosa’s clan appeared staunchly opposed.

“He’s young, like you,” Rosa said. “He can learn anything in time. Whether or not he can become human enough, well, that’s for the humans to decide, now isn’t it.”

“I think he’d have a great time. And he could go back to the water whenever he wanted! I read a lot of the old stories. It’s cruel to keep selkies away from the ocean.”

“Cruelty. I suppose you think we’re cruel for our methods of keeping him safe.”

“I...don’t think you’re cruel, Rosa. I think you’re afraid of letting him go before it’s time. And boy, you should talk to my parents about that. Even getting permission for field trips is a pain in the butt.”

“When is time?” the woman asked. “Most selkies leave by their sixteenth or seventeenth season. They start lives of their own. Amelia tried. But look at us now. Grown creatures, watching after a pup, hoping he doesn’t grow up.”

“Once we grow up, we’ll be safer. Right?”

“We can hope.”

Hope was all they had. For her part, Connie hoped that Stephen and Greg could meet up again. It wasn’t just an excuse for a phone call. In her heart, Connie knew she couldn’t introduce Stephen to the world by herself. She had to admit that she was afraid. Lying to her mother in the hospital had been terrifying enough. Taking Stephen to get pizza on their first day together was a memory tainted by new fears. The first forays were always the hardest, though. People like Mr. Universe made it easier.

Some time, the man would find out. Once Stephen got older, if they continued down this path, they would have to talk openly about why the boy lived by the ocean, why he couldn’t read or write, why he had never been to a hospital before. Connie glanced up at Rosa and bit her tongue. There were some secrets that she couldn’t spill by herself. It would have to be decided by the other selkies when Mr. Universe was ready to face the truth that there was magic in this world. Come to think of it, Connie had never asked what the man believed it. Did it really matter, if Stephen’s mere existence could shatter faith regardless?

Behind them, a solid alarm sounded, a single tone coming from the speakers around the school. Connie gasped, resisting the urge to whip around and stare. The period was over. Rosa glanced backwards with her, hardly perturbed. 

“The bell!” Connie said. “I’m gonna be late for homeroom!”

“You should hurry up. But do be careful.”

Connie was fairly certain that Rosa wasn’t being sarcastic, but it was impossible to tell for certain, and Connie wouldn’t put it past her. The girl put her hands on the bench, and as soon as she got ready to push herself up, Rosa stood in front of her. The woman gently put her hands underneath Connie’s arms, and helped the girl up to her feet. She stepped back to let the child get her balance, with that skin still tucked under her arm.

“Th-thank you.”

“And I promise I’ll think about Stephen, and I’ll think about you. If this Universe man is who you say, then you’ll hear him.”

It was a promise that took all of Connie’s trust. With everything on the line, the girl wondered if this was why her parents and other grown-ups didn’t trust just about anyone. They had seen so many lies and so many consequences of lies. Still, they hadn’t seen anything like this. Connie kept her mouth shut as she waved and grabbed her backpack, hobbling as fast as she could down the grass and back towards the sidewalk.

She didn’t have to look back to see Rosa off. The woman had come here without trouble, and she could leave just as inconspicuously. As she walked back towards the front door, Connie couldn’t help but think of how strange the plan had been. Wasn’t it just as risky to show up at the front door knocking? What if someone saw her taking Connie to the park. For that matter, it wasn’t certain that they hadn’t been seen in the first place. Lies would only go so far. Rosa didn’t have any identification, no papers, no license, no phone. If she were somehow to end up in police custody, that would be the end.

For all the woman’s anger and caution, though, she seemed savvy enough. Her confidence in her goals got her up to the school and got her the conversation she wanted. Connie rounded the corner and approached the door outside the library. She took deep breaths, rolling her backpack along the knobby asphalt. Thankfully, this conversation hadn’t been quite as painful.

One day Connie knew she was going to meet all of the selkies together. That togetherness was part of how they had survived, as much as it seemed to be against their nature. It was interesting to Connie that selkies were solitary, considering her forays into seals showed many species in large colonies. The specialness set them apart. Once more, Connie had to remind herself that they were a completely different species.

The girl opened the door to the flow of students walking past the library on their way to their own homeroom classes. A couple glanced at her as she walked in, but there was a mother and child going out the same way talking about some appointment. They passed Connie and left the building, and everything returned to normal. Connie kept a sigh to herself, and let a smile touch her lips. She was blending in. Nobody suspected a thing.

Stephen wouldn’t last a day. Or was Connie not giving him enough credit? His terminal shyness would make him a target, as would his lack of fashion sense and strange body. At the pizza shop he had smiled, but at the hospital he had been wildly fearful. The experience of being with a friend had probably been enough to make the lunch excursion pleasant, while being so far away from the sea with a stranger like Mr. Universe was more stressful. Stephen had no expectations for what to do during a school day, no semblance of structure or regimen. Fear could be enough, but he wouldn’t enjoy it. He was an animal.

Connie was at her classroom before she knew it. Everything she needed for the day was in her backpack, thankfully, and she could go home satisfied that she had something to look forward to. There was also the backlog of research that she didn’t do at the library, but there weren’t any forced extracurriculars for her to go to either. Plenty of time to read.

Her assigned seat had been moved closer to the front of the room, and she had a wide enough berth to accommodate the flow of students around her. Mrs. Snow had been more than understanding, having apparently been in a skiing accident a few years prior. She had talked to Connie about her love of the mountains, her desire to get away from the coast during the summer. Connie smiled as she sat down. Well, not everyone can leave the coast.

Connie wondered if there were other magical creatures in the mountains. It only made sense, considering the existence of selkies, but there was no way to prove it. She remembered asking Stephen one time if there were any other creatures like him out there in the ocean, anything else that lurked below. The boy had tilted his head. They were sitting on the damp sand. It had been a cold day, and they sat together, legs pressed up against one another. Connie had had to keep wiping her glasses on her shirt to clean them.

“There are humans, and selkies, and other animals,” he had said. 

“But I mean magic stuff, Stephen! Like, uh, sea serpents, or krakens, or things like that!”

Stephen had laughed a little, raising an eyebrow as if Connie was crazy.

“The sea made only us. Maybe she was making humans, too.”

The gendering of the ocean, the implication of sentience — it spoke to a spiritual mythology that didn’t match up with a lack of history. But spirituality didn’t need complexity. Stephen must have been taught the very simple concept of a mother ocean, a land that gave and was given to, kind of a new-age idealism. Just like the water, the concept was constant, present, and all-encompassing. What more could a boy need?

On the wall behind Mrs. Snow’s desk, Connie saw a poster she had never really paid attention to before. Across a spread-out world map, different arrows pointed to different locations, zooming in to a historical building or monument from that area. There were neolithic stones, ancient temples, frescos and murals as high as a house, colossal amphitheatres that could hold millions of people. Connie stared up at each picture in turn as the classroom settled into a routine.

It would be impossible to explain to Stephen what that poster meant. Why was it important to document human progress? Why learn about the past? To the selkie, and to all selkies, there would be no reason. There were no innovations, no exploration, nothing separating the creature from the moment.

But he understood stories. And the past did matter, try as Rosa might to dismiss the concept. When Stephen had seen his parents’ death, it had scarred him, terrified him, and Connie knew it had changed him. It was a story about a lie that he had been told, a secret that had been kept from him. There was no lineage to be traced, but there were events to be reconciled. Connie could help Stephen make a lifetime of memories. Right now, in her life, Connie knew she would remember every story she was creating.

She didn’t want to write about the skeletal system. She didn’t want to do exponential equations, or memorize vocabulary. Connie reached into her backpack and pulled out a notebook, a spiral-bound journal indistinguishable from her other school materials. The girl flipped past her pages of drawings of home, abstract emotions, and sketches from  _ The Unfamiliar Familiar _ . Once the ink turned from black to blue, she knew she was close.

If her mother knew she was drawing, Connie knew that there would be an advanced art class on her roster before the end of the week. It was fun to draw for herself, for no reason. The further in Connie went, though, the more the sketches resembled figures and looked proportional. References were easy to come by with internet access. Connie could find pictures of the ocean and photographs of seals on any nature site.

The differences between selkies and seals were hard to spot at first glance. The sizes were certainly different, with selkies being much larger than the species they resembled. But the eyes were slightly closer set, the fins longer, the coats smoother. All the life sketches Connie had looked at were different than Stephen when he pulled his coat up and flopped back into the sea. To the untrained human eye, though, there was no difference. The difference between human beings and transformed selkies was all in the eyes and teeth. Rosa’s teeth had been slightly squarer, but Connie had seen the points when the woman spoke. She suspected that Stephen’s would change over time. The eyes, though were here to stay.

Connie turned to the last page, then closed the book, looking around to make sure nobody was watching her. If someone were to see the drawing, there would be embarrassing questions to follow, she was sure of it. Maybe she could write him off as a book character, or some foreign actor. To her memory’s credit, her drawing of Stephen’s round face was as faithful as she could make it, and it was her own private illustration. Connie knew she had captured some part of Stephen on the page. After all, even now, she couldn’t help but smile.


End file.
